Summertime and Somersaults

by Jane Lawes

  About Summertime and Somersaults

  Tara loves gym and spends every spare moment practising in her garden. When she joins the Silverdale Gym Club, Tara’s catapulted into their star team. But with so many new things to learn – like backflips, somersaults and handsprings, how will Tara ever catch up with her talented teammates?

  For Clara

  Dear Reader,

  Like Tara in Gym Stars I dreamed of becoming a world-class gymnast and joined my local gym club. Tara’s story reminds me of my early days of training and the thrill of entering my first big competition.

  I hope you enjoy reading about Tara as much as I have and if you want to become a gym star too – go for it! With focus, talent and dedication your dreams really can come true…

  Love,

  Dear Reader,

  When I was growing up, I used to live, breathe and dream gymnastics – like Tara, I loved working and working on new moves with my coach as I wanted them to look absolutely perfect!

  Gymnastics is a fantastic sport, and with hard work and determination, can be extremely rewarding. It can also be very dangerous however, and without the correct supervision and equipment, can easily lead to injury. Because of this, it’s so important to make sure that you practise everything in a gym, where you have the right equipment and supervision.

  Since these books have been published, I’ve loved hearing all your stories about new moves you’ve tried and competitions you’ve won, and can’t wait to hear more! I just wanted to pass on what my coach used to tell me – always make sure that you practise everything in the safe environment of the gym!

  Keep trying, keep working and most importantly, be safe!

  Lots of love,

  www.janelawes.co.uk

  Contents

  About Summertime and Somersaults

  Dedication

  Foreword from Beth Tweddle

  Letter from Jane Lawes

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Glossary of Gym Moves

  Q&A Session with Jane Lawes

  About the Author

  Gym Stars series

  Ballet Stars series

  Usborne Quicklinks

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Tara yawned and stretched, then smiled when she remembered she didn’t have to get up yet. It was the first day of the summer holidays. She thought about all the fun things she was going to do with her friends. She was most excited about her eleventh birthday in a couple of weeks, and the party she was having to celebrate. The sun was already streaming brightly through a gap in her pale blue curtains and she was too hot under the bedcovers. It was going to be a beautiful day – perfect for practising gymnastics in the garden.

  Tara loved gym. A year and a half ago, when she was in Year Five at school, her class had learned to do handstands and cartwheels in their PE lessons. As soon as she kicked her legs up into her first wobbly handstand, she was hooked. She’d always loved watching gymnastics on TV, but actually doing it was even better. So she spent every spare moment practising – out in the garden at weekends, in the living room or her bedroom if it was raining. Now she had the whole summer holidays stretching out before her and she was going to use every single day to work on her skills.

  She closed her eyes, listening to the birds outside, and thought about all the things she was going to learn. A backward walkover was top of her list. She was nearly there, so close that sometimes when she was practising she felt like she was sure to manage it if she just tried once more. There were so many other things she wanted to learn too – like backflips and somersaults – but she knew she wouldn’t achieve them all this summer. Everything in gymnastics took a long time and a lot of work.

  She threw back the covers, suddenly wanting to get started right away. Downstairs, her six-year-old sister Anna was already up and watching cartoons, with a half-eaten bowl of cereal on her lap. Dad had gone to work and Mum was nowhere to be seen. She was probably enjoying the first day of not having to take Tara and Anna to school.

  “Morning,” said Tara, helping herself to some cereal.

  Anna mumbled something, but Tara couldn’t hear what it was because Anna had her spoon in her mouth. Tara ate her breakfast, washed it down with juice, and then ran back upstairs to get dressed. A T-shirt and shorts were all she needed for practising gym, so she was soon running back down the stairs, pulling her blonde hair up into a messy ponytail as she went.

  The garden was sunny and warm. She was glad to feel a little breeze on her arms and face – gymnastics was hard work and it was even tougher when it was boiling hot outside. Tara’s garden was quite big. A rectangle of grass took up most of the space, which was brilliant for practising floor routines and taking a run-up for round-offs and handsprings. There were flower beds around three sides, and the fourth side, nearest the house, had a little concrete patio they used for barbecues.

  She did a quick warm-up in the middle of the garden. Warming up was really important; they were always told that in PE at school. She definitely didn’t want to pull any muscles – the idea of an injury stopping her from practising all summer was too horrible to think about! Secretly, Tara also liked warming up properly because it made her feel like a serious gymnast. Real gymnasts like Beth Tweddle and Shawn Johnson had to warm up well because they did such difficult things, and Tara wanted to be just like them. She swung her arms around in big circles and stretched her leg muscles by lunging forward, and to the side. Then she bent to touch her toes and, keeping her legs straight, put her hands flat on the floor, feeling the stretch down the back of her legs.

  With her warm-up done, she got started on the day’s work. She practised easy things first, as a kind of extension of the warm-up. Cartwheels and round-offs; bridges and handstands and splits. These were all things she’d learned to do last summer. When she was in Year Five, there had been a girl in the year above who did gymnastics at a club outside school, and she’d shown Tara how to do some of these moves. They came naturally to her now. The more tricky ones came next. These were mostly things she’d seen the older girl doing and had taught herself later, when she was able to do the basics. She practised moving from a handstand into a bridge position, and then pushed her hands off the floor so that she stood up. It had taken her every weekend of the summer term to learn that and she was very proud of it.

  She stood in the middle of the garden, wishing that today might be the day she did her first backward walkover. She was already part of the way there. She could stand with her feet apart and bend over backwards into a bridge. Then she kicked her legs over so that she was standing again. It had taken her ages and ages to manage that last bit. She’d started by doing it with her feet up on the sofa or her bed, and when she could do that she’d used a sturdy box that Anna stood on to see into the bathroom mirror when she brushed her teeth. Anna called it the Grow-Tall-Step, and she’d cried when Tara left it outside overnight. That was when Tara decided it was time to try kicking over just from the ground. It was hard. It had taken days and days of aching wrists, a sore back and disappointed hopes. But she’d got there. Now she could do it, easy-peasy, and that made all the work feel worthwhile. It was time she moved on to real walkovers.

  She stood with one foot pointed out in front of her an
d her arms stretched up. She bent backwards smoothly, raising her leg as she went so that she ended up in a bridge with one leg pointing up to the clear blue sky. She pushed hard with the foot that was still on the ground, but she couldn’t do it – she couldn’t kick her leg over to standing position. Instead, her feet landed back in a bridge. She let her body slump to the ground. For a moment, she lay on her back, one hand shielding her eyes from the bright sun.

  “Come on, Tara,” she whispered. “You didn’t expect to do it first time, did you? Try again.” She rolled over and got to her feet. Sometimes it was tempting to give up. But then she’d remember gymnasts she’d seen on TV, and the things the girl at school had been able to do, and she kept trying. She wanted to be like those gymnasts more than anything in the world.

  She gave the backward walkover another try. The same thing happened. Again. And again. And again. It was hard but she knew this was how gymnastics worked. All of this would be worth it when she finally managed to do a real walkover.

  “Tara!” Anna’s voice broke into her concentration just as she was about to have another go. “Mum says you’ve got to come and have lunch!”

  Lunch? Tara was shocked. Was it really lunchtime already? She’d been so focused she hadn’t noticed the sun travelling across the sky, or the day getting hotter.

  “Mu-um,” Tara said slowly, while she ate her sandwich.

  “Yes, Tara?”

  “You said we’d talk about it again in the summer, and it’s summer now…so…can I go to a gym club?”

  “We’ll see,” replied Mum. “We’ll have to find out about the ones near here.”

  “Please?” begged Tara. She’d been pestering Mum and Dad for ages now, and Mum knew that Tara had already gone on the internet and looked up all about the local clubs. The real problem, Tara knew, was that Mum was worried she’d get bored of gymnastics. But there was no chance of that! She just had to make her parents see that.

  In the afternoon, Tara pretended that the soft green grass was the blue square of a gymnastics floor area. She danced and jumped and twirled, scattering her favourite skills through the routine as she went. She was imagining elegant music in her head, with a good rhythm for tumbling. She couldn’t do any really good tumbling runs yet, not like the gymnasts she saw on TV – they all did backflips and somersaults with loads of twists and turns. But Tara still managed to put together a few tumbling sequences – on diagonal lines across the floor, just like world-class gymnasts did – with round-offs, one-handed cartwheels and her best skill of all: a handspring. She’d only just learned to do those, and she still needed a bit of a run-up, so she put one right at the end of her routine. A couple more run-throughs and she was ready to perform.

  She stood in one corner of her floor area. In her mind, her T-shirt and shorts became a gorgeous blue and black leotard, and all around the flower beds, the crowd were waiting for her to compete. She stepped forward, and raised her arms to present herself to the judges by the washing line. Then she took up her starting position, and the music swelled around her as she began the routine. She danced expressively, she finished every move as neatly as possible; she jumped and balanced and pretended that she was Beth Tweddle, one of her favourite gymnasts.

  Tara was nearing the end of her routine and it was time for the handspring. She took a deep breath, pointed her foot and ran diagonally across the floor. She launched herself forwards onto her hands and sprang over onto her feet. She landed in a squat position, which wasn’t how it was supposed to be, but it was the best she could do so far. She stretched, did a few more turns and leaps, and finished the routine with a graceful pose. Her imaginary crowd went wild, and she was just wondering what her score would be when she realized that the clapping was real.

  “Good job, Tara!” said Dad. Tara went red. She hadn’t noticed that she’d actually had a proper audience!

  Later that evening, Tara lay on her bed and watched the World Championships from last year, which she’d recorded when it was on TV. She’d watched it a hundred times since then, maybe more, and she knew all the gymnasts’ routines by heart. Her favourite routines were the ones on the floor. Would she ever get a chance to do those things? Some things were easy enough to practise in the garden, but she’d need big, squashy safety mats to try anything really difficult. Even if she had mats, she didn’t have anyone to show her how to do the moves. Would she ever know what it felt like to twist through the air in a somersault? No chance, she thought. She sighed, and rewound her favourite floor routine again. She imitated some of the gymnast’s graceful arm movements while she lay on her bed. Even if she did nothing else all summer, she would show Mum and Dad that gymnastics was not just a passing phase. It was the only thing she ever wanted to do.

  Chapter Two

  Tara kicked her legs up into a handstand, walked her hands forward three times, and then had to come down. She went up again. Walking on her hands was addictive! This time she managed four steps before she lost her balance and came down, her legs twisting to the side.

  “Watch out!” laughed Kate, one of her two best friends. Her other friend, Emily, laughed too.

  “Don’t you ever get bored of doing that?” she asked.

  Tara shook her head and strands of blonde hair whipped across her eyes. She pushed them behind her ears and sat down on the grass with her friends. They were in Kate’s garden, enjoying the lovely sunshine and the fact that they didn’t have to go back to school for six whole weeks. They’d been there most of the day, chatting and listening to music on Kate’s iPod, which she had plugged into some speakers.

  “I love this song!” said Kate. She started to nod her head and move her arms in time to the music, dancing as well as she could while sitting down.

  “Nice moves, Kate,” Tara giggled. “You should have performed that at the leavers’ show.” Kate went to a dance class once a week. Year Six had performed a talent show in their last week at Meadow Lane Junior School, and Kate had tried to get Tara and Emily to do a dance with her. Emily had been too shy, and in the end Tara and Kate had left it too late to make anything up. Some of the other girls in their class did dances, but Tara thought Kate would probably have been better than all of them. She was definitely more confident than anyone else.

  Kate pretended to be annoyed and narrowed her eyes at Tara. “Bet you can’t do any better.”

  Tara grinned at her and jumped up. She listened to the rhythm of the music for a few seconds, and then she started dancing. She made it up as she went along, jumping, twirling, and trying the kind of dance steps she’d seen her favourite girl bands doing. She grabbed Emily’s hand and dragged her up, trying to get her to dance too, but Emily didn’t really know what to do. Tara took her friend’s hands and started to spin around, faster and faster, until they were both shrieking and laughing. Emily let go and they stumbled away from each other.

  “That’s not dancing,” scoffed Kate, standing up. “I’ll show you some real dancing.” She started to make up her own dance to the song, which was nearly over by then.

  “Ooh, that was cool!” said Emily. “Show me how you did that last bit?”

  Kate did it again, flicking her arm out to the side, then jumping into a half-turn. Emily tried to copy, but she kept getting her arms in the wrong place.

  “What did you do before the arm thing?” Tara asked suddenly. Kate showed her the little dance again, and she followed it as well as she could.

  “Put that song back on,” said Kate.

  Tara sorted out the music, and then Kate went straight into the same short sequence of steps.

  “Do it slower!” begged Emily. Kate took a deep breath and shook her long, dark hair back over her shoulders.

  “Come over here, Tara,” she ordered. “I can’t show you both if you’re doing handstands into the flower beds.” Tara and Emily exchanged smiles – Kate loved being in charge. Tara went and s
tood next to Emily as instructed. “Start with your right leg,” Kate said, and turned around so that they could copy her as she danced…

  When they’d got the hang of it, Kate started to add more moves. Tara and Emily threw in ideas too and by the end of the afternoon they had a dance long enough to last the whole song.

  “Shall we perform it for our mums when they come to pick us up?” suggested Emily.

  “Good idea,” said Tara.

  “Or…” Kate began, and they could see in her eyes that she was coming up with something that she thought would be even better. “We could make up some more dances and do a show for them in a few weeks!”

  “We could do solos as well as stuff together,” said Tara, knowing that her friends wouldn’t want to put any gymnastics into the group dances.

  “Definitely,” Kate nodded, but Emily looked worried. “I’ll help you with yours, Em, if you want,” she offered.

  “Thanks,” Emily sighed.

  Tara was lost in her own thoughts. She couldn’t wait to get started on her solo. She’d find some perfect music, maybe something like the classical pieces gymnasts used in big competitions. Then she’d make up a brilliant routine to show off all the new skills she’d learned. As the show was a few weeks away, maybe she’d even be able to include a backward walkover.

  Chapter Three

  Tara woke up the next morning to the sound of Anna screaming her name. She jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs, wondering what was wrong.

  “Come quickly, come quickly!” yelled Anna.

  “What is it?” Tara asked breathlessly, crashing through the living-room door. Anna was in her usual place on the floor in front of the TV, a bowl of cereal in her lap.

  “Are you okay?” Tara demanded.

  “Look,” said Anna, pointing her spoon at the TV. Tara looked. Anna was watching one of the Saturday morning TV shows where the presenters ran competitions and games, and had singers and film stars on to talk about their latest hits. On the screen, one of the presenters was chatting to a group of boys and girls. “They’re gymnasts,” Anna told her. “Like you.”